Need an advice!Do VPN play a part for torrenting purpose? I am using torrent site for downloading games and movies but have been facing malware and viruses. Its so frustrating to clean my system every time, so did a little research on my own and found this Best Torrent sites which seems interesting but I don't know about them that whether they too are safe or not? So should I use a VPN before downloading anything from torrent sites ?

Last edited by clayvligon on Mon Nov 06, 2017 11:54 am, edited 1 time in total.

Short answer: no, there's no way for a proxy to check for malware in a torrent file that is being currently downloaded.

Lately, some VPN services started to offer a sort of 'scrubbing' features intended to minimize the exposure to malware when browsing the web. This makes a lot sense since, nowadays, the main source of infections and exploits comes from connecting to alien networks (i.e., internet) or opening potentially unsafe files.

Let's be real: running a full-blown AV on your endpoint device (your laptop, desktop computer, mobile device) is usually meaningless if you pay attention to simple things and behave online the same way you would do on the streets. Even worst, most of those anti-malware solutions will likely cripple your system performance while at the same time do nasty hidden stuff by hooking to the entrails of your system. This is understandable, though, because in order to protect you, they need to have access to the low-level parts of your OS to monitor as much of the attack vectors as possible. However this comes at a price: 1) who watch these vigilantes? and 2) the aforementioned performance hit.

So, companies like F-Secure and some others have started to move the logic of scanning for malware from your endpoint device to their own servers as, anyway, when you hire their services (in this case FreedomeVPN), all your traffic are belong to them. Other companies like AdGuard or the VPN provider Private Internet Access also have their own solutions. On their backend, this is implemented as a multi-tiered stack, usually involving anti-malware conventional scanning, web bugs blockers, curated DNS resolvers and so on.

If you're positive the places you visit and the files you download could be compromised, I strongly suggest you to employ a secure browser (maybe Brave?) and always try the stuff you download in a virtual machine first.

Last edited by i90rr on Sun Nov 12, 2017 10:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.

i90rr wrote:Short answer: no, there's no way for a proxy to check for malware in a torrent file that is being currently downloaded.

Lately, some VPN services started to offer a sort of 'scrubbing' features intended to minimize the exposure to malware when browsing the web. This makes a lot sense since, nowadays, the main source of infections and exploits comes from connecting to alien networks (i.e., internet) or opening potentially unsafe files.

Let's be real: running a full-blown AV on your endpoint device (your laptop, desktop computer, mobile device) is usually meaningless if you pay attention to simple things and behave online the same way you would do on the streets. Even worst, most of those anti-malware solutions will likely cripple your system performance while at the same time do nasty hidden stuff by hooking to the entrails of your system. This is understandable, though, because in order to protect you, they need to have access to the low-level parts of your OS to monitor as much of the attack vectors as possible. However this comes with a price: 1) who watch these vigilantes? and 2) the aforementioned performance hit.

So, companies like F-Secure and some others have started to move the logic of scanning for malware from your endpoint device to their own servers as, anyway, when you hire their services (in this case FreedomeVPN), all your traffic are belong to them. Other companies like AdGuard or the VPN provider Private Internet Access also have their own solutions. On their backend, this is implemented as a multi-tiered stack, usually involving anti-malware conventional scanning, web bugs blockers, curated DNS resolvers and so on.

If you're positive the places you visit and the files you download could be compromised, I strongly suggest you to employ a secure browser (maybe Brave?) and always try the stuff you download in a virtual machine first.

Thank you so much! It indeed solved a lot of queries which I had in my mind.

Using torrent without a VPN it seems scary as there are several torrenting sites that deliver the infected files which causes a great damage to our PC. The research you have done is quite interesting, you must choose a site that ensures the privacy and security before downloading any files from torrenting sites. On the other hand, most of the countries put a ban on torrenting sites as it is against their law enforcement, still, we all want to go for it and without a VPN it’s nearly impossible. I have been using VPN for torrenting for a long time and I would prefer to use a VPN if you want to download games through torrent.

Neil_Hines wrote:Using torrent without a VPN it seems scary as there are several torrenting sites that deliver the infected files which causes a great damage to our PC. The research you have done is quite interesting, you must choose a site that ensures the privacy and security before downloading any files from torrenting sites. On the other hand, most of the countries put a ban on torrenting sites as it is against their law enforcement, still, we all want to go for it and without a VPN it’s nearly impossible. I have been using VPN for torrenting for a long time and I would prefer to use a VPN if you want to download games through torrent.

I often am looking to watch movies and torrent is the solution to that. The problem we have to go for torrent is that each movie is not available on Youtube or other video websites. So it's torrent which provides the solution. Can you suggest a way to download my favorite movies with torrent but safely without harming my PC?

As torrenting is illegal downloads of files and break the law of piracy so, Its advisable to use a good virtual private network to hide your location while using best torrent sites like piratebay, kickasstorrents and other sites similar to these. I advice using Express VPN which is the industry leader for using torrents and save browsing.